wool in the winter and in thread in the summer time. Ferragut knew all
their names, having read them in the _Trovas_ of Mosen Febrer, a
metrical composition in Provençal, about the warriors that came to the
neighborhood of Valencia from Aragon, Catalunia, the South of France,
England and remote Germany.

At the conclusion of the mass, the imposing personages would nod their
heads, saluting the faithful nearest them. "Good day!" To these, it was
as if the sun had just arisen: the hours before did not count. And the
notary with meek voice would enlarge his response: "Good day, Señor
Marquis!" "Good day, Señor Baron!" Although his relations never went
beyond this salutation, Ferragut used to feel toward these noble
personages the sympathy that the customers have for an establishment,
looking upon them with affectionate eyes for many years without
presuming to exchange more than a greeting with them.

His son Ulysses was exceedingly bored as he followed the monotonous
incidents of the chanted mass in the darkened, almost deserted, church.
The rays of the sun, oblique beams of gold that filtered in from above,
illuminating the spirals of dust, flies and moths, made him think in a
homesick way of the lush green of the orchard, the white spots of the
hamlets, the black smoke columns of the harbor filled with steamships,
and the triple file of bluish convexities crowned with froth that were
discharging their contents with a sonorous surge upon the
bronze-colored beach.

When the embroidered mantles of the three priests ceased to gleam
before the high altar, and another priest in black and white appeared
in the pulpit, Ulysses would turn his glance toward a side chapel. The
sermon always represented for him a half hour of somnolence, peopled